Liz nods and feels relieved. The idea of everyone wearing the same clothes for the rest of time was one of the more depressing things she'd thought lately.
After a shower (which Liz finds gloriously equivalent to showers on Earth), she wraps a towel around herself and goes into Grandma Betty's closet.
The closet is large and well organized. Her grandmother's clothes look expensive and well made, but a bit theatrical for Liz's taste: felt cloches and old-fashioned dresses and velvet capes and brooches and ballet slippers and ostrich feathers and patent-leather high heels and fishnet stockings and fur. Liz wonders where her grandmother goes in these garments. She further wonders if Grandma Betty owns jeans, for the only thing Liz wants to wear is jeans and a T-shirt.
She searches the closet for jeans. Aside from navy blue sailor pants, she finds nothing even close.
Completely frustrated, Liz sits down under a rack of sweaters. She imagines her messy closet back home with its twelve pairs of blue jeans. It had taken a long time to find all those jeans. She had had to try on many pairs. The thought of them makes Liz want to cry. She wonders what will happen to her jeans now. She puts her head in her hands and touches the stitches over her ear.
Even getting dressed is difficult here, Liz thinks.
"Did you find anything?" Grandma Betty asks when she comes into the closet several minutes later. In this time, Liz has not moved.
Liz looks up but doesn't answer.
"I know how you feel," Grandma Betty says.
Yeah right, Liz thinks.
"You're thinking that I don't know how you feel, but in some ways, I do. Dying at fifty isn't as different from dying at fifteen as you might think. When you're fifty, you still have a lot of things you might like to do and a lot of things you need to take care of."
"What did you die from anyway?" Liz asks.
"Breast cancer. Your mother was pregnant with you at the time."
"I know that part."
Grandma Betty smiles a sad little smile. "So, it's nice I get to meet you now. I was beside myself with disappointment that I didn't get to meet you then. I wish we'd met under slightly different circumstances, of course." She shakes her head. "You might look pretty in this." She raises the arm of a floral print dress that is not at all like something Liz would wear.
Liz shakes her head.
"Or this?" Grandma Betty points to a cashmere sweater.
"If it's the same to you, I think I'll just wear my pajamas after all."
"I understand, and you certainly won't be the first person to go to an acclimation appointment in pajamas," Grandma Betty assures her.
"Your clothes are nice, though."
"We can buy you some other things," Grandma Betty says. "I would have bought them for you myself, but I didn't know what you would like. Clothes are a personal business, at least for me."
Liz shrugs.
"When you're ready," Grandma Betty continues, "I'll give you money. Just say the word."
But Liz can't bring herself to care what she wears anymore and decides to change the subject.
"I've been wondering what I should call you, by the way. It seems odd to call you Grandma somehow."
"How about Betty, then?"
Liz nods. "Betty."
"And what do you like to be called?" Betty asks.
"Well, Mom and Dad call me Lizzie ..." Liz corrects herself. "They used to call me Lizzie, but I think I prefer Liz now."
Betty smiles. "Liz."
"I'm really not feeling well. Would it be all right if I stayed in bed today, and we changed my acclimation appointment to tomorrow?" asks Liz. Her collarbone feels tender where the seat belt pulled against it during last night's crash, but mainly Liz doesn't feel like doing anything.
Betty shakes her head. "Sorry, doll, but everyone's got to have their acclimation appointment their first day in Elsewhere. No exceptions."
Liz leaves the closet and turns to Betty's bedroom window, which overlooks an unruly garden.
She can identify roses, lilies, lavender, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, begonias, gardenias, an apple tree, an orange tree, an olive tree, and a cherry tree. Liz wonders how so many varieties of flowers and fruits can share a single plot of land. "Is that your garden?" Liz asks.
"Yes," Betty answers.
"Mom likes to garden, too."
Betty nods. "Olivia and I used to garden together, but among other things, we never agreed about what to plant. She preferred useful plants like cabbages and carrots and peas. Me, I'm a sucker for a sweet perfume or a splash of color."
"It's pretty," Liz says, watching a monarch butterfly rest on a red hibiscus flower. "Wild, but pretty."
The butterfly flaps its wings and flies away.
"Oh, I know I should probably trim everything back and impose some order on it, but I can never bring myself to prune a rosebush or clip a bud. A flower's life is short enough as it is." Betty laughs. "My garden is a beautiful mess, I'm afraid."
"Are you sure you don't want to drive?" Betty asks on the way to Liz's meeting at the Registry. Liz shakes her head.
"You shouldn't be discouraged just because you had a minor setback."
"No," Liz says firmly. "If I'm getting younger anyway, I'm going to have to get used to being a passenger."
Betty looks at Liz in the rearview mirror. In the backseat, Liz's arms are folded across the chest of her pajama shirt.
"I'm sorry about my tour guide routine last night," Betty says.
"What do you mean?" Liz asks.
"I mean, I think I was trying too hard. I want you to like it here, and I want you to like me. But I think I just went on and on, and sounded like an idiot."
Liz shakes her head. "You were fine. I just ..." Her voice trails off. "I just don't really know you is all."
"I know," Betty says, "but I know you a bit. I've watched you most of your life from the ODs."
"What are ODs?"
"Observation Decks. They're these places where you can see all the way to Earth. For limited amounts of time, of course. Do you remember when you saw your funeral on the ship?"
"Yes," says Liz, "from the binoculars." As long as she lived (died?), she would never forget it.
"Well, they have Observation Decks set up throughout Elsewhere. They'll go over it today at your acclimation appointment."
Liz nods.
"Out of curiosity, is there anyone in particular you'd like to see?" Betty asks.
Of course, Liz misses her family. But in some ways the one person Liz misses the most is her best friend, Zooey. She wonders what Zooey's prom dress would look like. Would Zooey even go to prom now that Liz was dead? Zooey hadn't bothered to attend the funeral. If Zooey had been the one who died, Liz definitely would have gone to her funeral. Now that she thinks about it, it seems pretty rude that her own best friend had skipped out, particularly under the circumstances.
After all, if Zooey hadn't asked Liz to the mall to look for dumb prom dresses, Liz wouldn't have been hit by a taxicab. If Liz hadn't been hit by a taxicab, she wouldn't have died, and . . . Liz sighs: you could drive yourself crazy with ifs.
Suddenly, Betty gestures out the window, causing the car to swerve a little. "That's where your appointment is. It's called the Registry. I pointed it out to you yesterday, but I don't know how much attention you were paying."
Out her window, Liz sees a gargantuan, rather homely structure. The tallest building Liz has ever seen, it seems to stretch up to infinity. Despite its size, the Registry looks like a child built it: walls, stairways, and other additions jut out at improbable angles, and the construction seems improvised, almost like the makeshift forts Liz used to build with her brother. "It's sort of ugly," Liz pronounces.
"It used to be better looking," says Betty, "but the building's needs are always outpacing its size.